Retro Lit

I blame Karen at Cornflower Books for my current obsession with  70's novels. Karen is the arbiter of literary good taste and I thought that if she was reading them it was a respectable thing to do, practically academic research.

Before I knew what was happening I was immersed in the guilty pleasures of  'The Property of a Gentleman'  by Catherine Gaskin. There were ghostly dogs, goodies who were baddies, baddies who were goodies, rich men with no emotional intelligence, lost loves, unexpected deaths and I hadn't even got to the end of the first chapter. Bring it on, I thought, I am ready for Retro Lit.

I would like to make a few observations which I hope will help your own close reading:

1. Be prepared for sartorial shock

"the long skirt was of brilliant orange quilted cotton, and I wore it with a yellow high-necked sweater, and tied about the waist was a long black sash I had bought for a few pounds in [an] auction of Victorian costume."

2. Warning : secondary smoke may affect your reading

"I...smoked one after the other of Askew's cigarettes. A nurse came and gave us some tea... She stayed to arrange magazines on the table, and offered remarks about the weather, but no answers to the questions  I asked...Then Dr. Murray came back. I jumped to my feet...He gestured to me to sit again. "Got a cigarette, Robert? Thanks." I could have screamed with impatience as he lighted it..."

3. Alcohol consumption is not moderate.

"I thought of the brandy we had both drunk, and now the champagne. It hardly seemed to matter...We made a slight inclination to each other with our glasses..."

4. A world before Mary Berry

"There was onion soup with hot garlic bread wrapped in a towel, chicken in some kind of sauce that only a serious cook could make, the sort of pastry that one saw on the trolleys of the most expensive restaurants..."

5. The golden eagles are red herrings. Ignore them.

"When the word gets out that golden eagles are nesting there...there are enough stupid clots who'll actually want the eggs themselves."

Quite. 

Next stop "A Falcon for a Queen"

' What force had driven her to seek out a mysterious and embittered grandfather she had never known?